Ha, I just wrote a post about self narration and Sarah Palin, and wanted to make a TinyURL to use it for Twitter and look what I ended up with …. http://tinyurl.com/sarahpalinstory

(turns out most of the custom aliases for Sarah Palin are taken .. no surprise - but I did get one - http://tinyurl.com/Xsarahpalin - too bad I don’t have anything as interesting to point my TinyURL too - oh well - right now my TinyURL sounds like the name of a prescription drug).

Turns out you can do that with any TinyURL you make - in essence - you have the start of a whole new set of domains you can get by giving them a “Custom Alias”.   That can be super powerful.

I just make a TinyURL that says - my blog, Webmetricsguru.com, is the place you go when you want to learn about Web Analytics.

But what happens when someone else tries to do exactly the same thing?  You can’t!  Ha, I bet a few people I could name will be muttering “why did I think of that” when they read this.

I would rush and do the same for your name - before someone does it to or for you - and points it to a source you don’t want them to.

I think this is going to be big - very big - in a couple of weeks, once people figure out what to do with it.

One glitch though - you can only make one alias per url - I created one for MarshallSponder and pointed to www.theanalyticsguru.com and another one for NEWYORKART and pointed to my www.artnewyorkcity.com blog.

Ha!  Double Ha, Ha.    That’s pretty cool.

Hey, even if a domain is taken, a individual page can be aliased - provided you have a page that fits what you want to custom alias it for - I guess I could try it on some of my more important blog posts, etc.

Look, I tried to do a TinyUrl for “Art” and custom alias it back to www.artnewyorkcity.com but that one was already taken (try it - http://www.tinyurl.com/art) - darn, I wish I had that one!    I don’t even think it registers who owns the TinyURL, and I don’t think there’s any way to transfer it to someone else (meaning you can’t sell it).

I guess I wasn’t the first person to think of this - but for sure, I will not be the last one.

I’m not sure how long the TinyURL custom alias was available - but I can tell you - this is a big deal.

TinyURLs are used ALOT.